Red Wings Practice

Today we watched a couple of hours of a Red Wings practice session before heading back home.  As you can see, Mary got some very good pictures as the players ran through a series of drills.
Top Left - Coach Blashill talks to  Justin Abdelkater (in white) and two other players.
Top Right - Coach Blashill calls the players together to explain the next drill.
The bottom two photos show players participating in various drills.

Overall it was very cool to see how the team practices and runs their drills.

After leaving the practice, we started our 4 hour drive south, arriving home in mid afternoon with lots of things to do, typical of returning from any trip.  We enjoyed our time "up north" and look forward to going back again.

Game Day!

Today was the Red versus White game where the Red Wings are divide into two teams and play each other.  They played two 30 minute periods with the last five minutes of each period played 3 on 3 instead of 5 on 5 and was clearly the highlight of the weekend.   It was a good game that ended in a 1-1 tie.  After watching the alumni game last night, today's game was fast and faster!  It was very neat to see a lot of "name" players competing today as well as many of the up and coming players who are hoping to make the team.

After the game we spent some time walking the Traverse Bay beach before heading to our next event of the day - the Russian Five movie! Mary and I had seen it before, but seeing it a second time with a bunch of Red Wings fans was very cool.  We both enjoyed seeing it again. 

Tomorrow we have tickets for the morning Red Wings practice before heading home.  

Mackinac Island and Traverse City

OK - This is a repost, hopefully with a working video!

Our day started with a boat trip to Mackinac Island. We had not been there for many years (neither of us could remember how many) so it was nice to go back for a few hours. We were very surprised at the length of the line when we arrived at 9:30 but, fortunately, Sheplers's started running a second ferry so we did not have to wait for the 10:00 sailing.  The lake was a bit rough (5-8' waves) and we caught quit a bit of spray as you can see in the video below.  We walked the main street from one end to the other.  Mary caught this pretty picture of the Mackinac Bridge from the island before we caught a boat back to Mackinaw City to head to Traverse City. Upon getting back to the city, we were even more surprised that the line for a ride to the island was now twice as long! Why are so many people headed to the Island in mid September??


We tried to have lunch at a famous Northern Michigan polish restaurant, Legs Inn, but there was a 30-45 minute wait so we headed on, driving a very pretty, but narrow, tree-covered highway known locally as the Tunnel of Trees.  It took a while, but was pretty as advertised.

After dinner we headed to the Centre Ice Arena for the Red Wings Alumni vs Celebrities game. Our seats were in row 1, right next to the ice, so the players were maybe 3' from us!  We've never sat that close before. Ah the benefits of a training camp game!  We especially liked seeing Mickey Redmond, a former Red Wing and now one of the Red Wing TV announcers. He is stretching out, pregame, in the picture on the left.  The Red Wings' current coach, Jeff Blashill, played goalie for the Celebrities team.  He has his mask off as he shook hands after the game in the picture on the right.  All in all it was a great day.

Tomorrow we see the Red vs White game, where the Red Wing players play each other.  That will be very cool!

Mackinaw City

Today we started a long weekend road trip to northern Michigan to go to the Detroit Red Wings training camp.  Out first stop is at Mackinaw City, at the northern tip of the lower peninsula.  A picture of the famous bridge to the upper peninsula is on the left.  It's about a 5 hour drive from home, so we stopped for lunch in Grayling at one of Mary's dad's favorite burger places, Spike's Keg O Nails.  He used to take me here when we came to Grayling to fish the Au Sable river.  It's a typical northern Michigan bar with great food and lots of beer.  He apparently never told his family about this place since Mary first heard about it from me. 8-)

After we got to out hotel, we took a drive to Wilderness State park to enjoy some beach time.  Well, we quickly discovered that most of the beach is gone due to the very high water in Lake Michigan! When we've been here in the past, there were several places where you could park and get to the beach, but most of those were closed this time due to the high water levels.  We were amazed to see this sign (click to enlarge), several feet into the water when it, obviously, was supposed to be high and dry. 

We did manage to get one long distance view of the bridge.  We'll get better pictures tomorrow when we take a ferry to Mackinaw Island before heading to Traverse City in the afternoon for the Wings' training camp activities.